2009 - Week 2 - The Crap

Yep, finally lets look at the rubbish, err, unscripted TV success stories for the past week...

Sudden Drop - Tuesday 16 December 2008

There was a massive week on week drop in viewership last night.

Nine’s reality double looked hot last week but lost some of it’s sheen last night thanks to reduced overall numbers with about 160,000 less viewers tuning in across the hour.

Everything on Nine dropped week on week by around 100,000 viewers, ABC experienced a slight drop across the night while for seven Eli Stone and Ghost Whisperer both dropped while their 7.30 and 10.30 hours improved.

Seven’s decision to limit Ugly Betty to one night a week in favour of yet more animal flavoured reality has paid a dividend with Wild Vets and Coastwatch both lifting their audience by an average of 70,000 viewers in the slot.

Prison Break improved week on week by 30,000 viewers.

Ten showed slight a slight loss for The Simpsons (down 13,000 viewers) but a slight life for Rules (up 29,000 viewers. Last week Rules’ retention was 83%, last night it was up to 88% which is a good sign.

NCIS improved week on week by 7,000 viewers and In Plain Sight now coming in at a more manageable hour length was up 117,000 viewers retention improved from 51% to 60% an improvement but it will need to improve more over the coming weeks to secure a berth in this slot.

Late night suprise - Tuesday 9 December 2008

Nine pulled a swifty last night and for one hour became channel seven. A new show, Sudden Impact, which is another one of these car crash doco-soaps and the return of NZ sitcom Police 10-7 did the business in the opening hour.

What’s more astonishing is that ‘tis the season for surprise hit rerun movies with Mr & Mrs Smith not too shabby for the next 2 and a half hours, the icing on the cake was Survivor which was bumped back to 11pm but still commanded a huge aud for that time period, generally after 11 shows are lucky to exceed 300,000 (unless they started earlier or are live sport) so that’s an outstanding figure.

Surely Nine will be emboldened to try out Survivor again in Prime Time especially with an extra season up their sleeves meaning they could potentially show it year round without a break.

Seven seem stuck in 3rd gear in the early evening, Ghost Whisperer did better than Dirty Sexy Money which was hurtled back to 11.30 for it’s long limp off the screen, but Nine’s movie, In Plain Sight and the incompatibility of Ghost Whisperer all combined to give Prison Break a headache down 63,000 week on week.

NCIS was again the best Prime Time series on the night but this audience didn’t carry over for the 2 hour premiere of In Plain Sight with the audience almost halving – even taking into account the drop as the night wears on that’s still a bad result.

Almost as bad was the shocking performance of Rules of Engagement, losing to a show in it’s death throes (Ugly Betty) is a bad thing on any occasion, but losing 135,000 from a compatible lead in is just tragic. Having said that The Big Bang Theory experienced a similar drop from it’s lead-in on Monday (816,000 vs 1,018,000 for Mr Sheen) but still – nobody needs under 700,000 viewers at 7.30, even at this time of year.